Socio-economic background - Scottish Government

Data on employees’ socio-economic background is limited, as it only gathered as part of the People Survey. We use the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) as our measure for socio-economic background below. The NS-SEC groups the occupation of the respondent’s main income-earning parent when they were 14.

Those whose parents were in “professional or managerial occupations” are classified as “High”. Those whose parents were in “clerical, sales, service and intermediate technical occupations” are classified as “Intermediate”. Those whose parents were in “routine, semi-routine, low supervisory and technical occupations” are classified as ‘Routine’, and a final category is included for those whose parents “Never worked”.

The declaration rate for socio-economic background in the People Survey is 81.6%. This excludes all staff who could not be categorised for any reason (denoted “Undetermined” in the charts and tables below).